This was a result of me reading a book about self-publishing by Dean Wesley Smith* and then reading Jack Campbell’s The Lost Fleet series in about a week on Kindle.
Continue reading “Where Did THAT Come From: The Self-Publishing Gig”Where Did THAT Come From: The Jaiya Metaseries
I spent part of my childhood “abroad,” where I discovered anime (dubbed into various European languages) and foreign cinema, due to my family’s fondness for French and Italian comedians like Jacques Tati and Terence Hill. This led, in my thirties and early forties, to an interest in films made in India: mostly in the Hindi language, but also some in the South Indian languages. There was a big learning curve, in terms of sourcing the more obscure movies, getting a feel for the cultures involved, and figuring out what appealed to me beyond the famous song and dance numbers.
Continue reading “Where Did THAT Come From: The Jaiya Metaseries”One Weird Trick: Electricity from Cow Manure
I’ll be honest, I don’t know enough about the engineering or the economics to understand whether these projects can work out in the long run, but points for thinking outside the box.
Recently announced (late 2021) project in Chhattisgarh (a state in Central India): https://indianexpress.com/article/india/chhattisgarh-generate-electricity-cow-dung-7551808
Longer running project at Dodge City: https://www.tpomag.com/editorial/2019/06/a-zero-stream-discharge-treatment-plant-now-produces-pipeline-quality-methane-from-its-biosolids
Wisconsin dairy farm powered by the methane from its own cattle waste: https://www.wisbusiness.com/2021/crave-brothers-farm-highlights-manure-digester-ahead-of-earth-day/
Remember the Reason for the Season….
Happy Epiphany!
Happy New Year!
I hope it goes well for all of us. Right now, I just feel kind of mentally tapped out, but here are my writing/publishing plans for 2022:
-Star Master Book 2: The sequel to Shadow Captain. Originally supposed to be the middle book in a trilogy, but is now going to be the second half of a duology. I have a new ending to write, and some character scenes and loose ends to take care of as well before I start polishing. The Gantt chart I made for myself in Excel gives me the first week in January to work on cover art and such things, before I have to buckle down and start writing. Optimistic release date: sometime between late May and early July 2022. Pessimistic release date: Christmas 2022.
–ThornMaster: A prequel storyline about the parents of a character in the Star Master books, the three initial episodes haven’t picked up any interest on Vella. May work on it some more once I get Star Master Book 2 to the polishing stage; alternating between drafting a low-intensity work of fiction and polishing/editing a related work of fiction has worked for me in the past. I hope to keep putting up chapters on Vella as time and energy permit; I will need to do some more digging into Amazon’s policies before deciding how to handle the part where I compile it into an ebook.
–Ancestors of Jaiya: still need reediting and new covers. New covers might happen in one of the periods where I’m trying to respark my creativity, but reediting will most likely happen after Star Master Book 2 is done, because I’m pretty sure I won’t have the mental energy for it before then.
-Epic Fantasy: Very early stages of planning, so early that one key plot element is just called “Maguffin Artifact” in my notes and the main characters are being referred to by their dayjobs (wizard, princess, knight… etc) because they don’t have names yet. I’m torn on whether to go forward with this; on the one hand, I’m having a lot of fun with the early world-building stages and feel more invested in it right now than the alternative (see below). On the other hand, my level of interest could change very quickly, and this series would be in an extremely competitive genre.
-Gaslamp Fantasy: The advantage to this one is that I’ve read and enjoyed a lot of Regency/Victorian/Edwardian fiction. The disadvantage is at this point that I have characters and a rough idea of a setting but no plot, and not much interest in developing it further at this moment. The other thing is that it’s a much less competitive genre than epic fantasy, to the point of maybe being a niche with not enough readers. All of that could change very quickly though.
God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
Sorry, delayed post due to seasonal obligations, but wishing you all a very Merry Christmas. And to the Grinches out there, a formal response, or as formal as you can get while quoting adaptations of children’s books:
Dorothy Sayers, Quotes from “Creed or Chaos?”
Due disclaimer about not agreeing with Sayers about absolutely everything (she was Anglican and a British subject; I am Catholic and a citizen of the United States of America). But I think she is correct in these quotes, explaining the importance of theology, in the sense of clearly articulating one’s religious beliefs.
“If Christ was only man, then He is entirely irrelevant to any thought about God; and if He is only God, then He is entirely irrelevant to any experience of human life. It is necessary, in the strict sense […] that a man believe rightly the Incarnation of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Unless he believes rightly, there is not the faintest reason why he should believe at all.”
“It is the dogma that is the drama — not beautiful phrases, nor comforting sentiments, nor vague aspirations to loving-kindness and uplift, nor the promise of something nice after death — but the terrifying assertion that the same God who made the world lived in the world and passed through the grave and gate of death.”
From a Certain Point of View…
So, NaNoWriMo2021…not a success in terms of wordcount. It looks like I will finish the month around or slightly under 18,000 words, the lowest results for any NaNo I have attempted. However, I did have a helpful insight yesterday in terms of what I was working on.
Continue reading “From a Certain Point of View…”Halfway Through NaNoWriMo, Not Halfway Done
I should be at 25000 words by now, but am a bit more than 10000 words behind. I think I’ve been this far behind before and managed to make it up in the second half, so we’ll see how it goes. General thoughts:
-Dictation continues to be a not-so-good choice for me for NaNoWriMo. The rest of the year, I use it mostly when I am burned out and fed up with what I’m working on. It’s more mental work for me to get my thoughts in order before I speak them than to type quickly and backspace through anything I change my mind about, and the amount of tweaking needed to turn the dictation results into some kind of sense largely erases the speed advantage.
-Working on multiple projects in NaNoWriMo, also not a great choice for me. I’ve gotten maybe 499 words on Thorn Master, and 1000ish on Star Master Book 2, only just started on Star Master Book 3 in the past couple of days. I tend to write my way slowly and meditatively through the second half (and missing scenes) of a long, complicated first draft. So, although mentally I probably needed to get the Book 2 stuff out of the way, doing that first definitely slowed me down.
-Anyway, feel free to learn from my mistakes here.
NaNoWriMo2021
Doing something a bit different this year, trying to work on three projects at once:
–Star Master Book 2: I finished the rough draft of this sequel to Shadow Captain. I think it was a couple of weeks ago, but there are some missing scenes I’d like to add if I can.
–Star Master Book 3: I have the epilogue written and a general idea of what leads up to it, and another general idea of where the story starts. The middle is kind of fuzzy.
–ThornMaster: This is a prequel/side story about the parents of Shenti, a supporting character in the Star Master series, currently being serialized in Kindle Vella. I have three episodes published, and the climax written as well. There’s a few key moments plotted out.
I’m hoping having multiple choices for things to work on will help with the 12K, 15K, 30K, and 40K blahs. We will see.
My NaNoWriMo Word document this year is laid out a little differently from the usual. The last couple of years, I’ve been putting the day’s date in “Heading 1,” allowing me to autogenerate a linked table of contents that allows me to jump from the front of the document to whatever I was last working on.
This year, each of the projects above are in “Heading 1,” and the plot points I know about and want to work on are in “Heading 2,” under their respective projects, which makes them subheadings to those projects. The day’s date will be in “Heading 3,” under whatever plot point I am working on that day. (Let’s not think too hard about what happens if I work on multiple projects or plot points on the same day.)
And since no National Novel Writing Month is complete at Casa Jaglion Press without someone singing about having a long ways to go and a short time to get there:
Jaglion Press 